Courts and the Judiciary

The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling striking down a Maryland law that effectively double-taxed residents on income made outside the state is going to have some dramatic impact on local governments.

Early estimates from Maryland tax officials have put that price tag in the neighborhood of $43 million to local municipalities. The suit, originally brought by a couple from Howard County, argued that they should have received some kind of tax credit for income taxes they paid to other states. Taxpayers do have a credit against the state income tax, but they don't for the "piggyback" tax, the money the state collects for local jurisdictions. The decision may also impact thousands of...

Related "Courts and the Judiciary" Articles

The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling striking down a Maryland law that effectively double-taxed residents on income made outside the state is going to have some dramatic impact on local governments.
Early estimates from Maryland tax officials have put that...

Carroll residents who worked out of state the past few years may be eligible for refunds on taxes paid in other states, which is expected to cost the county government about $1 million in the short term, and several hundreds of thousands of dollars...

A Howard County man charged in two home invasions last year pleaded guilty Monday in Carroll County Circuit Court and will face a five-year minimum when he is sentenced.
Clyde Harris Brown III, 35, of Dayton, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit...

A Hampstead man is scheduled to be sentenced in July after he pleaded guilty Monday in federal court in Baltimore to distribution and possession of child pornography.
Michael Eugene Aldridge, 42, covertly took videos of underage female victims, including...

Nearly two years after receiving a 100-year sentence for sexually abusing three children, a Westminster man received the same sentence Thursday.
Nicholas Adam Derita Jr., 50, of Westminster, was sentenced initially to 185 years in prison with all but 100...

Are the past year's examples of racially charged police abuses from Ferguson to Staten Island to North Charleston affecting the Supreme Court? In a subtle way, the answer may well be yes.
In the first evidence of an effect, the Supreme Court held Tuesday...

Pregnant women won a somewhat surprising victory at the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday. The court's four liberals got help from Chief Justice John Roberts, who joined the majority opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer, and a surprise concurrence in the judgment...

Three years ago, in the first Affordable Care Act case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts invented a legal doctrine that he memorably called the "gun to the head." During oral arguments on Wednesday in the second ACA case, Justice...

As the Supreme Court prepares to weigh in on who should control the districting process, it should consider the mess that has been made by political parties determined to maintain their advantage at any cost and weigh that against the rights of voters who...

The Court of Appeals of Maryland — the highest court in the state — will hear a lawsuit Monday regarding whether central committees shall recommend one name or several to the governor to fill legislative vacancies.
The vacancy in question is a delegate...

Appeal or retry? That's the decision Carroll County prosecutors must make after the state's second-highest court overturned a murder conviction for a man found guilty of opening fire in a crowded parking lot at an Eldersburg tavern, killing one man and...

Maybe you remember Roy Moore? He's the chief justice of Alabama who, in 2001, ordered the erection of a 5,200 pound granite copy of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court -- then refused to remove it in 2003 after a federal court...

Conservatives in Washington are increasingly confident that the Supreme Court will rule this summer that the White House has gone beyond its legal authority in implementing the Affordable Care Act. Any such decision would enrage liberals. They would...

A former Westminster resident was recently indicted in federal court for allegedly committing mail fraud by convincing victims to give him money to invest on their behalf with the promise of high returns.Jasper Buck, 59, now of Florida, was indicted by...

I don't usually agree with statements made by Commissioner Richard Rothschild, but I do agree with his comments that the Supreme Court's decision in Reynolds v. Sims (1964) damaged the functioning of a bicameral legislature by allowing increased urban...

A Hampstead man was acquitted of assault charges in the District Court of Maryland for Carroll County on Wednesday.
Adam Joshua Holland, 25, of the 1000 block of N. Houcksville Road, was charged with second-degree assault in October after a victim...

The death of Vermont's effort to install single-payer health care is revealing — and not only for what it says about the feasibility of such government-run systems in the United States. It also shows conservatives a way forward if the Supreme Court...

Carroll County is still awaiting a federal judge to determine whether county commissioners should be able to open government meetings with a Christian prayer, or whether the practice infringes on the rights of residents.
While an initial lawsuit was...

A Westminster man who called in a bomb threat to the District Court building in July entered a plea agreement Thursday and will be sentenced at a later date.
Michael Paul Justice Sr., 37, of the 700 block of Johahn Drive, pleaded not guilty but agreed...

Back in the 1940s, when the U.S. Supreme Court last spent a lot of time struggling with the question of what parts of a worker's day were included in the job for the purposes of getting an hourly wage, the cases tended to come out 5-4. Then, liberals...